Lost your crafting mojo? 💡 Let's just create!

hi everyone it's l Collins thank you for joining me today I've got a little bit of a different video for you today because I don't know how this one's going to turn out now I've been stuck in a little bit of a crafting rut lately I need to get my mojo back I've got lots of things going on at home that have kind of distracted me and I've just fallen out of the routine of creating regularly um I'm also creating for myself and just doing things on a whim or just doing things because I fancy it and I fancy using new products or whatever it may be now just a few weeks ago before I went off on a holiday I did order some new items um these are one of them this is another one of them so I definitely want to start using these I've got this little clipboard this is from Tim Holtz 2 and I'm going to create something on there now the inspiration for this piece is going to be these florals because I have been growing flowers in my new Garden this year new because we've been renovating a house and these Florals have are absolutely beautiful but I know they're getting towards the end of their time for the summer they're soon are going to disappear and I want to capture them and I want to keep them as long as possible so I'm going to try and preserve these few little cuttings and I really love this stem in the hot pink and I think that's definitely going to be one of the main images on here however I decide to use it and this will go on the wall in my craft room just to show me that even if I'm ever in a creative rout hopefully I can still create something look that looks beautiful and enjoy the process so as I say I've dug out all of my items that are new to me things that I just enjoy using regularly and I'm just going to have a play I have already decided I'm going to use a craft card stock it's quite similar to the uh backboard of the clipboard because I want to use this embossing folder this is a 3D embossing folder again sizzix Tim Holtz this is um I can't see the name of it now but it's the beautiful swirls so I'm going to emboss this craft card stock and then when I stick this onto the clipboard uh I don't have to worry about it not going all the way to the edges I'm probably going to do some stitching around the edge and it will kind of Fade Into the background anyway obviously I can't emboss the clipboard itself so to do this I've seen lots of really lovely um tutorials where people ink embossing folders I've done it before I've actually um got a video on my channel that's been ever so popular I'll make sure that's put up here for you on um adding ink to embossing folders so it's a beautiful effect so I'm going to do that I think I'm going to start with speckled EG and try that on the craft so I'm going to Ink one side of my embossing folder I'm going to Ink the side that's going to be the background so where the background is pronounced in the folder and I'm just going to brush my oxide in over the top now I find this works best with an oxide ink because I'm using a lighter color on a darker card stock um and also it doesn't pull because of the pigment in the ink it doesn't pull quite as much as it would if it was a distress ink the Dy based one so just dabbing that over and what I do sometimes find is that you may need to do this a couple of times to get a really solid color but it depends if you're going for a distressed look or not um I think I'm going to give it a very light mist of water as well so let's just grab my um water Spritz I've got again Tim HTS a little bit of a and I'm just going to do a very light light mist over there and then place my paper in and fold that down on top now once I've folded that I'm going to squeeze it to make sure that paper doesn't move I'm going to gently move these florals out of the way and bring my die cutting machine in and emboss this so I'm just going to try and leave that in the folder as best I can and I can see that I've got some background color there but I think I am going to Ink up the folder once more and I'm going to try and hold my paper in there whilst I do this with the other hand just to keep it all in place so it doesn't move and just add an extra layer of color so I try my best to get to the edge of a folder as much as I can but some of this is going to be trimmed down anyway so it's not the end of the world if I don't get it up the top here fold that over there we go and I'm going to run this through once more so there I've got a beautiful full um speckled eggs so sort of a teal blue background and the swirls coming off out of that in the craft so as you can see when you place it on the clipboard it almost looks as if the clipboards embossed obviously I need to go around the edge and Neen those up I do want to pick out some of the gorgeous detail that you can't quite see at the moment um with some gilding wax and gold gilding wax so I'm going to put the tiniest little bit now I have quite long nails and I do find putting my finger into the wax can ache cause um obviously oils grease bacteria off my fingers to sit into the wax over time that's going to effectively make it moldy make bacteria grow which we don't want but also I found I just get gilding wax under my nails so what I do every now and then is I get a spatula in there and I just scrape a little bit onto the edge of my jar and then just sort of smear my finger over the top of that and that gives me just a small amount of gilding wax that I can use without having to put my finger right into the jar each time and keeps my nails nice and clean so I'm just brushing over the tops of these swirls with my finger I'm not going to be too precise I just want a few little golden highlights picking out that beautiful detail that's in this embossing folder this is one that I've wanted for a very very long time and um I finally decided I think it was payday last month I decided I was going to treat myself and I got this and I got a few other things but then the uh the Mojo uh kind of disappeared I think I just got very very busy in a short space of time uh lots of things had to give and unfortunately my my crafting for myself was one of them and I'm now struggling to get back into it and enjoy it in the way I was so uh things like using these products and playing just playing with them not really having a plan with them I think or I hope it's going to be a really nice way of getting that mode show back so I'll hold this up to the light in a moment so that you can I think you can actually see quite well there that light hitting the gold and it just looks so beautiful there we go maybe a touch more down here although as I say there's bits that will actually get cut away the more I do it the more I want to just add more and more and pick out that detail more that's stunning there we go okay so that is just absolutely beautiful really happy with that and I found with this gilding wax this is actually a luster wax from szx the best way to clean this is with an alcohol based cleaning solution so I'm just trimming this down to size a little bit now it's quite hard because I've got the embossing and uh I do need a new blade in my trimmer ideally as well so I'm being very careful not to feather and catch the edge and make it not neat I think I will bring that up underneath the clip touch so I only need to take the smallest amount of the bottom there as always not measuring I don't measure anything I like to be quite free and natural with it and just cut it where it looks right not where measurements tell me I should be cutting okay now I will be um taking my sewing machine to this and stitching around the edge probably in a black um because it will really show up in a zigzag Stitch so I'll do that in a few moments but I think one of my ideas was to use one of these and I love I love using metal on my projects as well as metall metallics and I don't feel like I have to match the gold and the silver either so I think I am going to use that and then I'm going to bring my florals in um my florals I'm going to cover these with some Mod Podge now this is the only Mod Podge I have now that hasn't run out or dry up U and this one's getting close as well I do need to restock this is actually one um that's a matte a matte finish afterwards once it's dried and it will kind of seal anything so it's like um an acrylic sealer so plastic sealer almost and I have sealed um I was going to say feathers I haven't tried that before but flowers in um lemon before lemoning pouches before and they've worked really well where they don't discolor because of course the I can't get to them so I'm hoping if I'm really thorough with covering them with Mod Podge very carefully because of course they are uh very delicate I'm hoping that I can salvage them enough to stay bright and colored for a while but if they were to still continue to fade and sort of partly disintegrate on the project over the next few weeks and months I'm it might be quite interesting to see will they sort of go to a dried flower will they still Preserve their shape their color at all uh it'll be interesting to see I'm not so fussy that I definitely want these to keep their color um I'm quite happy to see how things go so I think what I'm going to do is have this as the main stem and I think I'll have it coming up here and it might be quite nice if it overlaps or comes up to the side here like so and then these ones which are all absolutely beautiful I'm going to tuck coming out from areas here so like so maybe another one like that and so on and so forth and I've got a few little uh they're a bit like daisies that came off a plant now I had to be careful because of course I could only take flowers from my plants which were still uh quite small I couldn't use anything too large and I think maybe one more just up here so something like that I'm going to position them I'm going to obviously cut the stem and I'm going to have everything looking as if it's coming out of the bottom of this metal piece so yeah I'm quite happy with that at the moment so I think what I'm going to do I'm going to do my stitching around the edge here just so that I can glue this down and as and when I decide on my next items I can actually adhere them down rather than just placing and moving along so I've stitched through the edge of the zigzag Stitch and I'm now going to adhere that onto my clipboard just so that I can continue and um start sticking things down as and when I decide on them so just some wet glue General Paper glue around the edge I like to use either the creative Craft products book binding glue which I've just run out of or the sizzix one I think they call this is the express glue yeah and I've left my threads there Loose as well rather than tucking them in just because I like the look and I've not ined around the edge because I almost want this to look look as if it is part of the clipboard if I can to a point so I've decided not to go around and darken the edges like I usually would if I was putting mattes and layers down so pressing this down obviously the stitching kind of stretched the paper ever so slightly so I've got quite Sticky Fingers now to give these a wipe and before I put my metal embellishment and my florals on there I'm going to use a little bit of black ink this is almost sort of a signature for me and I'm just going to do some Splats of black black I think is a color that a lot of people will shy away from but I love to use it as a nice contrast on my projects so trying to keep it more focused around where the floral is going to be but I am going to do some big blobs so taking my um tube out of the bottle be very careful not to knock that over and I'm just going to depress the nozzle ha and that's going to inject some ink down onto the project in a large blob so this is always a bit unpredictable um but I like if I if the splatters aren't quite doing it for me if then you know if they're not quite enough for me so happier with that now I'm definitely going to thoroughly dry this off before I stick anything else down on top now as I'm drying I can see some of the areas where the um ink spray is sitting on the gilding wax of course that's repelling it so I do need to just lift those up a little cuz they're never going to dry there we go and then the rest is actually nearly dry now I'm going to use a really strong glue I'm going to use Cal here to glue down the metal embellishment um I've tried hot glue in the past and I find very often unless the glue is very very good quality hot glue it just kind of lifts off after a little while it doesn't really stick smooth metal like so so then start positioning my florals now I know I want my florals to go into the base of this metal embellishment so to look as if they are coming out of it and I'm just going to use a little glue on these for now to hold them in place and then I'll use that Mod Podge now the Mod Podge may take a while to dry so uh that might be a case of I come back and complete the video later on once that's dry but we shall see how it works so I've used a wet glue there just to stick the flowers down like I say if these end up dying anyway and they go sort of a brown distressed colors and fade that's fine you know it's not going to be the end of the world it's not going to be a project ruined I can always take everything off the clipboard and reuse the clipboard or I can just leave it as it is and have it as a rustic faded sort of project so that's fine um I'm now going to let that glue dry where I've just used the wet glue again this is Express glue to glue those down bear in mind the florals fresh flowers they do have water content in them so they take a little bit longer to adhere um you might want to leave them overnight but they will start to droop they will start to lose their color if you do that um and I just don't think they're as vibrant that way so now I'm going to find a really soft brush so I'm going to go with this fan brush and I've got my Mod Podge here and I'm just going to go over each of the flowers very very gently now this probably needs a little bit longer to dry and I'm going to just brush over the petals as best I can now I know I'm never going to get full coverage on each of the flowers and I really don't want these to move around too much but you do need the softest brush brush you can find so as not to damage the petals if like me you've used very delicate ones particularly the daisies won't be so bad um but I'm going to go over each and every petal and then allow that to dry as well and what I'll do is I think we'll come back once I've gone over all of these and given them maybe an hour to dry as well so a little bit of a curve ball while I was very very slowly and gently painting my flowers with the Mod Podge I remembered that I had a spray and that's an enamel spray now I'm going to cover the brand over because um I'm not into uh promoting particular brands on here when there's lots of others you could use this is an enamel spray paint in a clear lacquer for uh like car body work so that sort of shop you would find this and it's actually for a project I uh a DIY project we never used so it was in my craft room I thought do you know what actually spraying we'll get in all the crevices and everywhere around the florals and be very gentle so I covered this area up with some tissue and I gave it a very light Spritz all over let that dry and then did it again and they're actually although um they still need to dry a little bit longer um they're actually seem to be a little bit stiffer and they've held their color so I'm good with that I'm actually quite happy with that I think there's a little bit of dullness to the color Just a Touch but not not crazy now because this is just a Mojo Kickstarter I'm not going to go mad with this project and do lots and lots more I've done some sewing some gilding wax some inking some embossing some ink splatting um obviously added my embellishments I'm just going to add a sentiment to this and I think this will be enough to um keep this piece uh as a nice like I said little Mojo starter not too in depth and doesn't take too long I think that's where I get scared sometimes that a project is going to take me hours and I just don't have hours for that um so I'm going to just have a look at these Tim Holt sentiments these are actually called Small Talk snarky um is the the theme of these ones and their ideology so I'm going to have I saw one here which I thought was great um and I thought it would really suit this which was from a procrastination standpoint today has been wildly successful and I think that works really well because when I've lost my mojo procrastination is certainly something I do an awful lot of now there's two areas where I may put this so I do need to just place it in either and decide where I'm going to go with it I do usually cut these down just take the blank ends off so I thought this would either go here which actually I'm quite liking that there or at the top here and it would overlap the edge of the paper a little bit over I'm just positioning it so it overlaps and goes to the edge of the clipboard H not loving that now I've put that down I think I'm going to switch to having that up here like so yeah I think that can go there now that's not going to stick very well I don't think to the um the guilding wax it's holding at the moment it may be a case of I need to add a little bit of extra glue under there uh that's kind of a reminder for me with the word procrastination in there um just let me know that even when I'm putting things off even when things aren't working out um and I'm not getting much done I can still create something beautiful I can still have that creative Outlook without needing to stress about achieving a lot just do something for the sake of doing something and enjoy it and I think that's probably as much as I'm going to do on that I do have other I have other work and jobs to do but I feel like I've achieved something now um hopefully you've enjoyed this project it's a little bit different I will let you know I will keep you up to date actually they're getting quite stiff now which is great um I'll keep you up to date with how the flowers hold up as well and certainly if you've got any small flowers in your garden that are starting to um get towards the end of their life because here in the UK it's the end of the summer now and we will lose a lot of them it might be worth salvaging a few of them you can see how the purples of this one have completely gone to a different color um it might be where I used the heat gun not close but a bit further away to dry um the glue before I sprayed so that could be the reason for some of that but I quite like the distressed almost dying dried flower look as well so I'd be quite happy if that's how they all end up so I'll keep you up to date on the community posts on YouTube with how this is going but thank you for watching me thank you for joining me I hope I've inspired you in some way and helped you Kickstart your mojo if you're in the same position as I am at the moment so take care everybody and I'll speak to you again very soon